On the Run

I Samuel Chapter 21, the Strange and the Spectacular

Verses: 16

Is It Read At Synagogue?: No.

Famous Quotes/Phrases: Verse 3 includes the phrase “פְּלֹנִי אַלְמוֹנִי” (ploni almoni), a wonderful onomatopoeia that basically means “so-and-so” or “such-and-such”.

Basic Plot: This chapter highlights two stops on David’s journey away from Saul. The first is the village of Nob, where he meets with a priest named Ahimelech. David pretends that he’s on an urgent secret mission on behalf of Saul, and asks Ahimelech for bread. Ahimelech only has loaves consecrated for ritual, so David claims that he can have them because he lacks bodily impurities. David also knows that Saul’s servant Doeg is in the area, so he asks Ahimelech for a weapon; sure enough, Ahimelech just happens to have Goliath’s sword just lying around.

Now armed with food and a weapon, David moves on to Gath, where King Achish’s courtiers recognize him. Not wanting to publicize his whereabouts, David pretends that he is mad, scratching the doors of the city gate and drooling into his beard. The ploy is successful, and David is allowed to leave Gath without being bothered.

What’s Strange: Little by little, we’re discovering more about David’s personality. A striking revelation in this brief chapter is that he is an effective actor. First, he fools Ahimelech into thinking he is working on behalf of the king, and then he dupes Achish into thinking he is somebody else entirely. It will be a while before David realizes that he can’t fake his way through everything.

What’s Spectacular: When we think of David, the words “freedom fighter” usually aren’t mentioned frequently, if at all. But many centuries later, European thinkers of the Enlightenment saw him exactly in this light. In The Reformed David(s) and the Question of Resistance to Tyranny: Reading the Bible in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Nevada Levi DeLapp relates that author William Prynne “uses the story of David as an example of a defensive war against an unjust king who invades his own homeland,” while author John Goodwin cites David’s acquisition of Goliath’s sword as a clear sign “of a kind of seventeenth-century British reading, which finds in David a kindred spirit against the wiles of an oppressive monarch.”

This is another example of the magnetic hold that David has on people, even millennia after his story would have taken place. Religious people and political thinkers alike are, quite simply, drawn to him, captivated by his unlikely ascension to influence and his bold and daring actions on his way to glory. We are accustomed to being swept away by a charismatic person. But we should always be wary of following such a figure to a fault.

Shabbat Shalom!